Highwoods Properties announced Wednesday that it has leased 69,000 square feet in the PPG Place office complex in downtown Pittsburgh that the company acquired last year.

The leases are all new customers and bring the occupancy rate in PPG Place to 83.6 percent.

Highwoods paid $214.1 million in September for PPG Place, a six-building complex that includes 1.54 million square feet of office space. The price included $17.1 million in planned building improvements and $8.1 million in tenant improvements that were promised under existing leases.

The Pittsburgh properties represented the first new market that Highwoods, one of the largest office landlords in the Southeast, had entered in more than a decade. The complex was 81 percent leased at the time Highwoods acquired the properties.

Ed Fritsch, Highwoods CEO, said in a statement that the company expects occupancy levels in PPG Place to reach 86.5 percent by the end of the year.

Highwoods also announced Tuesday that it had sold a 3-story, 62,000-square-foot building in Kansas City for $6.5 million. Highwoods had been emptying out the building of tenants to accommodate the sale of the building to Country Club Bank, which will occupy the entire space.

The sale is the latest in a series of divestitures by Highwoods. The real estate investment trust sold $148 million in assets during the second quarter. 

Highwoods shares closed Tuesday at $32.90. The stock is up 11 percent this year.